Le Cirque puttin’ on the chintz $tiffs staffers: suit

Legendary Upper East Side restaurant Le Cirque — where a wellheeled clientele dines on $47 entrees of potatowrapped sea bass and appetizers of tartare and caviar — is cheap when it comes to its staffers, a new lawsuit claims.

The Manhattan federal court classaction suit, filed by a former waiter this week, alleges the famously snooty French eatery and its owner Marco Maccioni, son of founder Sirio Maccioni, snub state labor laws.

Elvis Pena, 32, of New Jersey alleges in the suit that he and other current and former Le Cirque staffers were paid below minimum wage, cheated out of overtime and forced to share tips with management.

“It’s a shame that a restaurant of Le Cirque’s status and reputation would exploit their staff like this,” Pena’s lawyer, D. Maimon Kirshenbaum, told The Post.

Pena worked at Le Cirque from May 2006 until August 2014 in various jobs, including as a runner, bus boy and waiter. He says he worked 35 to 55 hours per week and was paid below minimum wage.

The suit also claims Pena and other service employees were forced to share their gratuities through a “tip pool” that “illegally included captains, who were managerial employees,” the suit says.

Kirschenbaum estimates that more than 100 current and former Le Cirque staffers are eligible to join the suit. Marco Maccioni declined to comment.

Le Cirque first opened at the Mayfair Hotel on East 65th Street in 1974 before relocating in 2006 to the Bloomberg Tower on East 58th Street.

The restaurant has attracted a long list of Alisters including Woody Allen, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy and former President Ronald Reagan. It also hosted shock jock Howard Stern’s 2008 wedding to Beth Ostrosky.